I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

Wisdom mitigates the risk of being honest.

A man of refined taste and judgment.

Specific music starts feeding my imagination and gives me a landscape that corresponds somehow, in some abstract way, to the world I'm just starting to imagine.

I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.

What it is is a type of editorialization, you know? This is self-portraiture. This is what you think about the world we live in.

[E]lections amount to little more than choosing between the scum that floats to the top of the barrel and the dregs that settle to the bottom.

Comfort zones are overrated. They make you lazy.

The question is -- Who will get to heaven first; the man who talks or the man who acts?

Horses raise what the farmer eats and eats what the farmer raises. You can't plow the ground and get gasoline.